Dirty Deeds
by GrammarDemon
Summary: Isolde McShae and her cousin Kieran are Cleaners, the Miserable Maids of the Supernatural world, and they're not supposed to mingle with Hunters. It's a rule Izza and Dean are happy to break. But when Kieran is possessed by a demon, Dean might have found his Get Out Of Hell free card. It's all up to Isolde: does she put family first, or does she save the man of her heart? Season 3.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: I'd like to thank Captain Monster Masher who allowed me to tell this tale and gave me the rights to write it; if she wasn't pregnant and also writing the extremely awesome Adventures of Ben Braden and Dean Winchester, Hunters Extraordinaire, this story would be hers. I feel it's important you know that Isolde's family slogan (seen below) is solely and brilliantly her brainchild. It was also CMM's request that this story take place in Season Three; I'm hoping you'll recognize some of the elements from the episode entitled "Fresh Blood". _

_Also: I have to thank flutterby cupcake for encouraging Squirrel-love. Isolde thanks you as well; she'll let you know if she finds any nuts. _

_Oh! Speaking of which. The rating for this story may or may not change. I have no control; I'm only the stenographer. And you know. Dean. Anything can happen. Especially nuts._

_And on that note, I present:_

* * *

**CHAPTER ONE: **

**"Dumping bodies. ****Bleaching things. ****The family business..."**

"Friggin' Winchesters," Kieran-my partner-in-grime-pushed past me, his metal bucket whacking me on the calf with a bang as he went by. "I hate these guys." Inside the bucket, his mop handle swung around, nearly smacking me on the head.

I was ready for it though, and ducked. "Stop whining, Kier. At least they burned the bodies, this time."

"Oh yeah, sure. Brilliant job. Did they bother to be sure all the bones burned? The skulls? The fangs? Did they bury the ashes? Nope. They just drove away in that souped-up antique like the pretty boys they are." He slammed the tin pail down on the concrete floor of the warehouse; the sound echoed creepily around the empty building, bouncing off the brick walls and metal shelves."Freaking _cowboys_."

"I like cowboys," I said, but not loud enough for him to hear me.

Kieran was right about one thing, at least. The Winchester brothers sure were pretty. Especially the oldest one. I shivered as I pictured him swinging his machete at the vamp he'd killed, his green eyes blazing and his lips set in a determined scowl...

Yeah, I know. Not pretty in the traditional sense, but seeing the man at work could take your breath away; he was so beautiful. All that intent and fluid grace, and saving the world besides? Made a girl's insides all gooey. The cowboy-moniker only made it more so. (It also made me imagine him in leather chaps and no shirt, maybe some cowboy boots and some leather gloves...and a hat... maybe little sweaty and smudged from doing cowboy-type stuff. Shirtless. In leather chaps. But I digress.)

I put my own bucket down more carefully, even though what I really wanted to do was wing it at my cousin's head. With _my_ luck, though, the handle would get caught in his hair and I'd have to listen to him bitch about _that_ as much as about how he hated the Hunters. Kieran's hair was long, black, and it was...well. Not practical for our line of work, but it fit his face and gave him kind of a pirate-type air, which I had to admit _was_ pretty cool. In fact, he was rocking the dreds this week, or something like them, because his hair was more silky than dreddy. But he'd wrapped strands of it in red cloth and clattering gold beads and braids in a kind of Jack Sparrow/Johnny Depp (minus the eyeliner) effect. At this moment, however, it just annoyed me.

Sort of like Kieran. It wasn't his fault that I found him exasperating and petulant, most of the time. After my father's brother, my Uncle Pat, adopted him, we were sort of shackled together because we're just about the same age, just three years apart. His siblings were too old and mine were too young, but our parents felt we were _juuust _right. Like Baby Bear's porridge. And that was that. The fact that we were of different genders didn't matter much, apparently; neither did the fact that we are opposites in many ways.

We'd spent practically our whole lives together, and we'd certainly spent too much time together _lately,_ packed like a pair of mooks in the van filled with Cleaner supplies, spell catchers and spook books, and the few personal items (like Kier's hair products) that we'd brought along when my dad had sent us out on our assignment a few months previously.

_~*~ A few months previously...~*~_

"You've been assigned to the Winchesters," Papa had told me.

"No! LLew!" My mother had risen like a wraith from behind the kitchen counter where she'd been organizing cupboards or something. (Because even in what was supposed to be her down time, my mom cleaned. She never took a break. She said she found it "relaxing". Personally, I think she was just a bit nutty from being married to my dad for twenty-five years. But that's a different story.) "I don't want Isolde to-"

"Bella!" My father had snapped out her name like a wet towel skimming someone's ass, and she'd slid back out of sight, returning to organizing paperclips or whatever she was doing. (Quiet, out of sight and out of mind. That's my mom. If only I took after her.) "Izza will be with Kieran. She will not have any contact with _them_. And besides, she knows the rules."

He speared me with his silvery-grey eyes and all I could do was shiver and nod. Despite the fact that what I really wanted to do was make contact with the Winchesters-lots of it-and especially with Dean, who really deserved as much contact as I could possibly make with him. _Preferably naked_. Not that we'd been naked together-in fact, we'd barely spoken, but a girl could dream.

At this moment, however, I swallowed and tried to appear indifferent even though tingles of excitement-and probably lust-raced along my skin. "I know the rules, Papa. Cleaners and Hunters. Never shall their paths cross." _As long as _you _never find out_, I amended.

"You must be like a breeze behind them. Whisking away their work until nothing remains of what they've done. No one not of our ilk shall know of the world of the supernatural and the Hunters will not know of us. _The Hunters hunt. The Cleaners clean. And never shall pass a word in-between._"

I nodded and wondered-not for the first time-why the rules were always intoned in that archaic, rhymy way. I mean, it wasn't prophecy. And you'd think someone would have updated the language and eliminated some of the double negatives by now, but nope. And who the hell says "ilk", anymore? Most of all, what was the point? The Hunters knew all about us. Hell, they made fun of us. And with reckless abandon, they left their messes for us to clean up. Asshats, the lot of them. Except, of course, for Mr. Yummy McYummy. Not that he-or anyone else-knew I felt that way. It was my secret.

In keeping with the desire to keep my Dean Winchester-lust a private thing, I answered my father obediently. "Yes, Papa." Even though the rules were old-fashioned and sounded like they'd come from a stone tablet carved eons ago, I acted as though they were current and fresh and actually made sense.

But really. If we don't want civilians to know about the supernatural world (and I'm not exactly sure that would be a bad thing, either) wouldn't it be smarter if those of us who knew about it worked together instead of pretending the other group didn't exist? You know, like one big, happy, anti-Supe family? But my Papa stood there watching me, wringing his hands. And I wanted this assignment. _A lot._ "No one shall know."

_And no one shall ever know that Dean Winchester and I already met. And passed words. And most importantly, swapped spit._

_~*~About ten years earlier…~*~_

It had happened when I was sixteen, one of the few times I'd managed to escape Kieran and actually go somewhere fun. He had what my mother politely termed "the grippe" (brought on by some bad hot dogs I'd impolitely dared him to eat, but she didn't know that). As usual, our family and Kieran's family had been shadowing some Hunters around the country in our beat-up camper vans.

The Hunters had created a base camp for an extended stay in a nearby motel. Lucky bastards. They get real beds and private bathrooms; we get camper vans and public showers. And no televisions. And we had six kids, four of them under the age of sixteen.

Good times.

What made it worse was that we could see and hear a carnival right near our campground. We set my little sister after our fathers so they'd take us. She had a way of making these puppy dog eyes that guaranteed adults would do practically anything for her. It was a gift, not a skill. (If it was a skill, it was one the rest of us could never master. Believe me, we'd tried.)

Anyhow, Papa and Uncle Pat took us to the fair. I escaped as soon as I could by claiming grippe cramps and ducking into a portable toilet, which even for Hunters and Cleaners is a place beyond Nasty. Still, my desire to get away from my clingy clan for a time led to this desperate act of defiance...and once I'd left the porta-john, bliss. Because I was alone. And I had freedom.

For me, freedom was riding the Ferris wheel. I love swinging in the cars high above the ground, the gentle ascent and the stomach-swooshing descent, and the way you could imagine what it would be like to leap off and fly in the silent air like a bird…

There was only one problem. The operators don't like empty cars. And there I was, a teenage girl in a strange town, with no friends...I swear, if there's such a thing as Adolescent Hell, being publically declared "single" (aka "a friendless loser") that's it. Right there. Hellhounds? _Like pocket pups._ Demons? _Pffft._ Single in a public place? _Strip my skin and grind my bones, it's the worst pain the Cosmos can conjure. _So here was this carny shouting, "Single!" and here I was praying my Papa didn't see me riding the Ferris wheel when I was supposed to be locked in the Porta-Potty AND, especially, that no one in my peer bracket saw me singled out and branded a freaking, friendless loser.

And then, I hear, "I'm single!" and see this tall, drop-dead adorable, green-eyed piece of yumyum boy standing right there. And I'm looking around thinking, "Who is he going to sit with?" and I realize it's _me_.

I'm proud to say I neither squeaked nor squeed. I think I might have orgasmed a little, but really, who wouldn't? It was Dean Winchester. Spontaneous orgasms happen. Of course, at the time, I didn't know any of this. I just stood there, staring up at him. And then he sort of ushered me into the Ferris wheel car and we were off. Just the two of us. Alone with our shoulders rubbing and the outsides of our thighs pressed together and...

Remember how I mentioned I love the Ferris wheel? Well, as usual, I started looking around enjoying the view and thinking about flying. _And him? _He started squirming and the next thing I knew, his hand was gripping my knee _really hard_.

"Hey," I said, ready to flip him out of the car no matter how yummy he was because-you know-_personal space_. But then I looked at his face and realized he was _terrified_. Because his face was a funny pale color, and he was biting his pretty pink lips and his emerald green eyes were wide and his long-lashed lids were fluttering… "Dude. You look like you just swallowed a bug."

"Mhfm," he choked.

"Holy crap. Did you? _Did_ you just swallow a bug?"

He shook his head and blinked at me. "I-I think-I think I don't...like heights."

_What? Seriously?_ I looked down. "We're only about a hundred and fifty feet up and...ow!" His grip grew impossibly tighter and I realized I was going to have some hard bruises to hide. Fingertip shaped ones. On my thigh.

_Great. This is going so well…_

He looked down at his hand and though he didn't let go, his grip loosened. "Sorry," he said.

"It's…" _Crappy, really, but I'll figure something out-_ "okay." Still. I pushed my hand under his and wrapped my fingers around his fingers. He had callouses, which is something Kieran had, too, but it's unusual in sixteen-year-old boys. Maybe he was older. "How old are you?"

"Eighteen," he said, sounding a bit defensive.

I realized he was defensive because he thought I was inferring he was a baby because he was so obviously scared, so I hastily told him why I'd asked. "Not many guys our age have hands like yours."

He lifted his left eyebrow at me and quirked the corner of his mouth into a half-dimple. My heart made a weak sort of flutter-thud, because he was so. Damn. Cute. "How's that?" he asked.

"You know, rough. Like you do work."

He pursed his lips, my heart went _thud, flutter, thud, bump,_ and he nodded. "Yeah. I work."

"What do you do?" I realized that we'd stopped moving. I mean, the car, not us. We were still moving. Sort of. As much as you can move in a Ferris wheel car two-hundred feet off the ground.

"Uh...we...uh…we...stopped...we're..." He appeared to realize we'd stopped moving,too, and were hanging there at the top of the wheel, perched at the pinnacle at the top of the ride. The wind fingered his hair, the car creaked and swung. From below, we could hear the music from the Rock'n'Ride. AC/DC, I thought. It sounded far away. And the ride itself, with all its passengers, looked tiny. Unlike his pupils, which had suddenly dilated with panic. I could feel his pulse through our joined hands, and it was racing.

You know, desperate times call for desperate measures. Especially from desperate girls. Without thinking about it too much, I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to his. His lips were warm and soft and tasted like gummy bears. And suddenly his arms were around around me and I realized..._Uh oh_.

Because Mr. YumYum and I might have been almost the same age and he might have been scared to death, but he also had way more experience kissing than I do. Not only that, he was _good_ at it. Like, really good. His kisses were not too wet, but not at all dry, and he did this thing with his tongue (in my mouth!) that I could feel all the way down to my toes and in my belly and especially in places like my-_Oh. Boy_.

And then I realized one of his calloused hands was making its way under my shirt and slipping under my bra. So I haul off and socked him one. Right in the cheek.

"Whoa!" he said and reared away. His lips were slicked with my spit, like they'd been glossed; there was a tiny red mouse on his left cheekbone where I popped him with my knuckle. I'm not stupid; I started kissing him again in case he thought I didn't want to. But at least I'd gotten my point across. He couldn't be all handsy when I didn't even know his name. Maybe later, when I did. But I wasn't about to waste time learning his name when there was kissing to do.

We made out for the rest of the ride and then rode it again. And again. And then I realized my Papa would probably be looking for me and I needed to pull myself together and not look like I'd been sucking face with a boy I didn't even really know for nearly an hour. He helped me straighten out my clothes. (I'll be honest, he was a persistent bugger and didn't take 'no' for an answer easily. He did, however, take repeated punches which says a lot about the type of guy he was, really. And now, knowing him for the consummate Hunter he is, I realize it says _everything_.)

Riding down that last time, he shifted against me (his arm was around me at this point and I was leaning into him wishing the Ferris wheel could go around forever) and he looked at me. "Hey," he said. "I forgot to ask. What's your name?"

"Isolde McShae." I told him. "What's yours?"

"I'm Dean. Dean Winchester." He grinned and his eyes lit up. "What's your name again?"

I was about to tell him when he stiffened; he pulled his arm from around my shoulders and sat up straight. "Uh oh. That's my dad. And my little brother. I forgot they'd be looking for me. I'm gonna get it."

I looked down to see a dark-haired, big man with a shaggy-haired kid emerging from a tent that had a fortune teller sign; the kid was hugging a giant stuffed banana that he must have won from some game stand. When Dean saw him, he snorted. "What a geek. I'm not walking anywhere with him if he's holding that thing. It looks like a big yellow dick."

I had no comment. I was sixteen; I wasn't ready for dicks at that point, or conversations about them, either. So I just stared. Besides, I'd just noticed my Papa coming out from beside the fortune teller's tent.

And the weirdest thing happened. His dad looked right at my papa, and their eyes met. Papa ducked his head immediately-Dean's dad reached out to touch his sleeve. He said something, and a smile crossed his face. But Papa pulled away and practically ran in the other direction. Dean's dad turned, too, and watched my father going away. When he faced us once more, he had a sad and somewhat disappointed expression.

Then he noticed me and Dean on the Ferris wheel and his eyes widened, then narrowed. He strode to stand by the platform, Dean's little brother and the giant banana beside him, and glared.

"I gotta go," Dean said then, and he stood, and started to get out.

"Hey! Wait until the ride comes to a complete stop!" The ride operator shouted and Dean stopped. But not because he'd been told to.

He turned to give me one more kiss. "Thanks for the ride," he said, pressing his forehead and the tip of his nose to mine. "If I could have you with me anytime I'm up high, I wouldn't mind at all."

"It was like...flying." I told him, and nibbled at his lower lip, something he'd taught me during our make-out session.

"Like floating," he corrected me. And then he was gone.

The Hunters left the next day and so did we. But instead of following them, we went to Clean after a different hunter, named Bobby Singer. A few weeks later, I overheard my Papa telling Uncle Pat about his almost meeting the Hunter, John Winchester…and that's how I learned about what my parents-my family, my clan-did. And about Hunters and Cleaners and later (when my parents thought the time was right) how to get an ectoplasm stain out of a Berber carpet or blood off flocked wallpaper (because you can't leave any DNA behind; that's how ghosts are created), and who I was going to call when I needed a grave dust buster or some ingredient for a cleaning potion.

But mostly, I waited for the day when my path and Dean Winchester's would cross again and we could finish what we'd started all those years before.

_~*~Just now...~*~_

So here I was, partnered with my whiny cousin, Kieran, who pulled his hair back from his face and tied it into a bejeweled and beribboned ponytail before he got to work; his faux-diamond stud earrings glinted in the dim overhead lights.

You want to know the thing that annoyed me the most about my cousin? He looked way better than I ever hoped to. Of course, he was six-foot-three and even when he put on the steel-toed combat-style workboots and the orange jumpsuit we Cleaners generally sported, he somehow managed to make it look like a cool fashion choice.

At five-foot-just about nothing, I was lucky the boots didn't look like thigh-high Dominatrix boots. Which might have been kind of awesome. Until you added the orange overalls. Then I just looked like an incarcerated Oompa Loompa in funky footware.

"The Impala isn't just an antique," I told him. "It's a _classic _muscle car, a 1967 Chevy-"

"Blahblahblah," he growled, and spit on the floor with disgust. "_Pah_! Gas guzzler."

"Oh. But our geriatric panel van is so _green_? What is with you, Kier?"

"I'll tell you what's with me. Crap like this." He leaned and plucked a piece of razor wire up from the floor; it was gooey with dried blood. Pieces of skin and gobby bits of flesh hung from it; it looked like a nasty piece of Christmas tinsel.

Which reminded me-there were only a few days left until December 24th. "Do you think we could just get busy and get out of here? I want to make cookies for Magda's for Christmas Eve."

Kieran ignored my request and said, "This place opens in less than five hours. You'd think they'd manage to at least pick up some of the mess. We had to sift the ashes and now clean this shit and-" Suddenly, his face turned red. "What the-oh, this is just the last fucking straw!" He stomped across the room. "We have to rebuild this whole wall!" He spat again, this time on the ground at his feet. "Fucking asshole Winchesters! Next time, I hope the monster gets them first!"

But not, I hoped, before I got to get Dean.

* * *

_I hope you enjoyed this. :) I'm going to go take a cold shower. (Oh shoot. Given the recent episode, that won't help either. Sigh.) Anyhow, please review! _


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's note: As I'm going through Season three, (I love that I have to watch Supernatural obsessively and repeatedly and can call it "research") I'm realizing this is going to diverge from it and go off on its own pretty soon. So hang on tight and be ready for sudden changes in direction (just, not during this chapter)._

_***NOTE: no breakfast foods were harmed during the upcoming scene.***_

* * *

**CHAPTER TWO**

It took longer than usual to get the job done because we needed to fix the wall by rebuilding it, yet making it look old and grungy at the same time. Fortunately, we were able to call Magda, who runs what's kind of like Cleaner Central Intelligence, and as usual she was able to give us a good incantation to move the job along.

I cast a final scrying spell to make sure we didn't miss anything. It was a good thing I did. One of Kieran's gold beads had come off and rolled under a workbench, and the spell revealed it with a little flash of blue light. I had to lay flat on the freshly bleached and then re-grunged floor to reach under and grab it. There are some-like my cousin-who would argue that might have been overkill, but I was my mother's daughter. Details were important. Even the little ones. I probably took longer than I should have because the sun was just coming up by the time I got out to the van.

"Where were you?" Kieran started the engine and pulled away from the building.

"Here. You dropped this." I dropped the bead into one of the cupholders.

"Damn it." Kieran replied. "Duck." He grabbed the back of my head and pushed my face to my knees, which really a response I wasn't expecting.

"What the hell, Kier?" I said from my lap, struggling to get out of his grip.

"Shhh!" My cousin didn't answer until he'd pulled out of the lot and away. Then he let me go. "Someone pulled into the lot!"

_Okay. Not good. Nothing to get hysterical about, either._ "So?"

"So, they were looking at the van. We almost got caught."

"But we didn't."

"_This _time." He slid his sunglasses onto his face and slid one of his favorite CDs into the slot in the dashboard. Thumping bass and guitar squeals filled the van, making the bottles of unguents and cleaning potions rattle and ring on their custom-built shelves, and making me twitch in my seat.

"Dude. Seriously? It's like, five a.m. It's too early for Dubstep." Honestly, I could feel the muscles in my cheeks contracting. There was just something so not right about it. "I think I'm getting a nosebleed. Can't we listen to something that doesn't sound like the artist wants us to die?"

"Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts her yap. Deal with it." He settled behind the wheel and-naturally-cranked up the volume. "Let's go get some breakfast. I'm starved."

0-0-0-0-0

"Carb up, Sweetie." Kieran grinned and poured syrup over my waffle. He was always cheerful after a job, something I found...incredibly annoying. _Of course._

"Leave my food alone, you freak." I told him, peering down at his plate of fresh fruit and a bran muffin. "Why don't you eat like a normal guy?"

"Gotta watch my girlish figure." He grinned and stole a piece of bacon from my plate. "Unlike you."

"Fuck off, Shirley." My figure was fine, thank you very much. Shorter than I would have liked, but curvy in the right places and not unpleasing. At least, I didn't think so. "Just because you won't order stuff you like doesn't mean you get to eat mine."

He wiggled his dark brows and his blue-green eyes twinkled. S_eriously annoying_. And grossly inappropriate. He opened his mouth and showed me the remains of my bacon.

"You're sick." I picked up the newspaper I'd dropped next to my plate and unfolded it wide as I could. _Finally. Some privacy._ I like newspapers. They're getting harder and harder to find except at little diners like this one. No one uses them anymore. But you can't block the view of the giant idiot across the table from you with a smart phone. Which isn't to say I hadn't tried. And failed.

Newspapers, however, they're perfect moron blockers. I started reading, looking for any weirdness that we might be called to clean up after, later.

Someone settled into the booth behind me. Actually, it was more like they threw themselves into it, because my side of the furniture wiggled. I tossed a "hey, watch it, doofus" look over my shoulder.

"Sorry." The guy behind me said-not unpleasantly, despite my bitchiness.

I went back to my paper. Kieran made a hissing noise and banged the table. "Sonuvabitching assholes!"

I ignored him. I just wanted to be quiet for just a few seconds. Was that too much to ask?

There were sounds of a laptop being opened and booting up, and our perky waitress asking, "Would you guys like some coffee?"

"Sure, sweetie. And keep it coming," another guy-who must have been on the other side of the table-said, in a deep, gravelly voice.

I shivered as goosebumps patterned my skin. I could have listened to Mr. Gravel Voice all day, I realized, and wondered what he looked like. Maybe I could go to the ladies' room, I thought. But then-he'd know I went to the bathroom.

_Seriously?_ Sometimes I wondered if my responses to men had been permanently forged and locked in adolescence. Man up, I told my inner girl, and lowered the paper. Across the table from me, Kieran sat scowling and spreading margarine over his bran muffin; a second look showed the muffin to be mostly mashed. He wasn't spreading it, he was shredding it as he glared over my shoulder.

"That muffin deserve to die a painful death?" I pushed the plate with my fingertips. "Told you to order a waffle."

"Don't turn around," Kieran said through gritted teeth. "It's them."

"Them? Them who?" All of a sudden, I _knew_ who it was. No one else would make Kieran destroy his own breakfast like that.

Better, I knew whose voice I'd heard. No wonder my inner adolescent had emerged; she'd recognized Yummyboy even before I did. Like he had pheromones casting out around him, saying _smell me! I'm delicious! And you want to sleep with me. Right now! _

"Oh my God. Dean Winchester is sitting behind me?" My voice came out all squeaky.

Kieran glowered, lowered his knife and leaned back in his seat. "I have half a mind-"

"Well, yeah. I already know that," I told him. "Put the knife down, you moron, and stop acting stupid. They don't even know you." I should have been busy counseling myself with pretty much the same advice, but I was too busy wondering if Dean would recognize me. I hoped he did. I prayed I didn't. I desperately wished for a mirror but for that I needed to go to the ladies' room.

But then Dean would know I _went_ to the ladies room.

_I don't want Dean to know I went to the ladies' room. He'll think I went to the bathroom to...go! I don't want him to think about me and toilets in the same...thought. Never. No! Nooooo! _I could feel my face growing hot.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Kieran hissed, his eyes narrowed. "Why are you twitching? You look like you're about to have a seizure."

"Shut up!" I hissed. "He might hear you!" Dean Winchester would hear my giant ape cousin telling me I'm having a seizure _and_ he'd know I used the toilet! _Oh my God. Oh my God! I'm going to die of embarrassment, right here in this diner and Dean will see me and I don't think I even brushed my hair!_ "I think I'm going to faint. I feel sick. Oh my god…"

We were saved-or something-from further damage when the first man, the man behind me, who I now knew to be Sam Winchester-_ohmygod_-said in ear, "I'm sorry. I couldn't help but overhear you. Are you okay?" And I could feel his breath on my neck.

"Waaaaugh!" Is what I think I said, and slid under the table.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't my best course of action. But I never said I was good in a crisis. Mostly I am an act-first-think-later-kind of gal, which always got me into trouble. Still does, actually.

This time, it resulted in three huge men sort of clustered around the table with concern for the crazy lady. Let me say this-six-foot-something-tall men have very long legs. And if you think you can just somehow slip past them when they're blocking your only escape-like if you're under a table in a crowded diner, for example-think again. These things are huge.

"Izza!" Kieran was the first to bend his body; I have to say it was kind of sweet the way he tried to wedge his giant self under the table to reach me. "Are you okay?"

"I-I-I'm-" _Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester! Dean! Winchester! _"I dropped my phone!"

"What?" He made the pouty lip face he always made when I confused him. "One minute you're having some kind of episode, the next you're...wait. You left your phone in the van. It's in the charger."

"Shut up!" I said, scrambling for some excuse, _and_ scrambling to slide out from under the table, too. It was easier for me, because I was smaller. I popped out into the light—which really was bright compared to the darkened space under the table—and said the first thing that popped into my head. (I swear, it really was.) "Phew! There's a lot of gum under there."

I tried not to look at either of the Winchesters, who were staring down at me (I think) as I reached into my pocket and pulled out my fake ID and badge to flash at the wait staff looking at me from behind the counter. "Health inspector! You've been warned! Scrape your tables or you'll be cited for excess waddage!"

And then I pushed past them and ran from the diner only to realize the van was locked. I was forced to stand there, waiting for my cousin to come out. Fortunately, he emerged only a few moments later, followed—_oh my God!—_by the Winchester brothers.

It's been my experience that extremely tall, good-looking men are somewhat rare; while it's true that there are plenty of tall men in the world, it's also an unfortunate truth that many of them suffer from gangliness or goofiness, as if they're accidentally going to get one of their giant feet tangled in one of their dangling arms and sprawl in a twisted knot of stick-like limbs. I know that's a mean thing to say, and you can hate me if you want, but I know—_you know—_ it's true. Long limbs can look coltish and awkward.

But at this moment—_well_. I know I wasn't the only woman wiping drool off her chin at the sight of the Winchesters and Kieran the Annoying leaving the restaurant in a tall-guy cluster. Kieran was in the lead (somewhere in the back of my mind, I muttered _of course_) with Dean and Sam flanking him on either side. I wondered how Kieran would feel if he knew he was as pretty as the Hunters he hated, something I would have to point out to him later. When he wasn't about to kill me. Because it _was_ pretty funny.

It was also kind of funny to notice how they'd gone in order from tallest (Sam) to shortest (Dean). Dean looked alot like he had at eighteen, but the arrogance he'd emanated then had matured into a quiet confidence; it radiated from him with each step he took. He was a man who had seen some battles and who was ready for whatever came his way; little did he know that "whatever" might soon be me. Although at the time, I wasn't so sure about that. I was still thinking about escape.

His eyes zeroed in on me as he followed Kieran, who appeared ready to strangle me for not only making him walk with Winchesters (_the horror!_) but also causing him break the rules (because there was supposed to be no contact with Hunters). When he got close, he grabbed my arm and sort of hoisted me over his shoulder with my ass in the air, then carried me to the front of the van closer to the building and hidden from the sight of onlookers, restaurant patrons and Hunter brothers.

"I ought to tell your father what you just did!" He said through gritted teeth as he put me down. "What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong with me!" I held my ground. "I fell under the table."

"You slipped under the table! You went there on purpose. Why?"

"Gum!" I blurted.

He glared at me, his chest heaving, his fists clenching and unclenching. "Don't lie to me, Isolde."

"Why would I be lying? There's no reason I'd do that on purpose," I lied.

I'm a really bad lier.

He raised his arm and I tensed. He'd never hit me before, but it wasn't an uncommon thing in the clans for men to physically discipline unruly women. I knew my father expected Kieran to be the man in our little partnership, and the leader, even though I was the elder. My gender—to the males of the Cleaner clans, anyway—made me the one who followed, the weak one. The bottom, if you prefer. All this went through my mind as Kieran's eyes sparked and his raised fist tightened until the knuckles were white. When he made a growling noise, I closed my eyelids and raised my arms over my head to shield myself from the blow.

But then I heard the wet slap of skin on concrete, and the snap of bones, and opened my eyes to see blood splattered and dripping down the white painted brick building behind me. I turned to see my cousin cradling his mangled fist in with his other arm. He panted as he stared at me.

"Hey. Let me look at that." Sam Winchester appeared at Kieran's side, reaching out to help.

"No." Kieran answered, pulling his broken hand from the Hunter's grasp. He didn't drop his gaze from my face, and I knew he was waiting for me to walk to the passenger side door and wait for him to unlock it.

I turned then, hurrying to do what he wanted. Because in this moment, my annoying younger cousin Kieran was scaring the hell out of me—and I was going to do whatever it took to wipe that look of rage from his face. But then Dean was there, blocking my way. "Hey. Are you going to be okay?" I shivered, and realized it wasn't from fear of my cousin but from the sound of Dean's rough voice. "Because if you need me to keelhaul Captain Jack over there..."

"I'm fine. He's not usually like this," I told him. "Get out of my way."

"You're not lying to me now, are you?" He touched my chin with his index finger and made me look at him. His green eyes burrowed into mine intently for a moment, then they widened. "Hey. I know you."

"No you don't," I told him before he gave Kieran more ammunition and something else to be angry about.

"I never forget a face," he insisted.

"You need to forget this one." I hoped the look in my eyes was enough to show him he needed to let this go. "Please."

I could see that he understood just from the way his expression flickered. He nodded then and let his hand fall back to his side; I could still feel heat in the place where he'd touched my chin. He jerked his head toward Kieran. "You and him. You're our Cleaners, aren't you?"

"I have to go," I told him.

"I'll be looking for you," he answered. "I need to figure out how I know you."

There was a thunk as Kieran unlocked the door. "Don't strain yourself," I said, and climbed into the van.

* * *

_Don't hate Kieran. Isolde doesn't. ;) And please review! _


	3. Chapter 3

_Author's note: There is just not enough Winchester in this chapter. I'm sorry. Izza insisted I give her full rein with the narrative and no matter how much I tried to tone it down/stop her, she wouldn't allow it any other way. In fact, she threatened to shut the story down. So with the promise of lots of Dean coming up (Stop it, you naughty fangirls with your double entendres. Don't think I can't hear you panting out there), I gave up and gave Izza control. _

_I think when she does catch up to Dean, he's in trouble, because she is bossy. (I see you over there with the fuzzy handcuffs. Stand down! This might go M but not THAT M. Then again, I couldn't get Izza to let me cut the backstory or the exposition, so who knows what she'll do when she's got Dean all to herself? Gimme the handcuffs. I'll pass them along...)_

* * *

**THREE**

We got on the road to Magda's; I was shaking so hard, tears spurted from my eyes. (No, I wasn't crying. I was emotional. There's a difference. Cleaners don't cry. We are strong. We are—oh fuck it, I was in tears.)

Can you blame me? The boy/man I'd had fantasy sex with for years suddenly appears in my life again (well, sort of suddenly) and _talks_ to me (which is almost as good as sex, I think) and rescues me from my annoying cousin who almost punches me. I had so many emotions roiling through me, I couldn't do anything _but_ cry.

"What the fuck, Kieran!" I blurted suddenly, and kicked the dashboard for good measure.

To his credit, Kieran didn't freak out or yell or do anything you'd expect him to do at that moment. Especially _that _moment. Instead, he pulled over on the highway and put the van in park, then turned to look at me, his blue-green eyes sad. "Izza—I'm sorry."

"Sorry. Sorry? You were gonna hit me back there. In front of De—the Winchesters!"

His face did a twitchy-crumply thing. "Yeah. About that."

"What is _wrong_ with you?" I whimpered in a tear-choked voice. (Augh. I know. Wimpy. Stupid, stupid, over-emotional girly girl. I might as well have asked what was wrong with _me_.) I swiped the traitorous tears away with the heels of my hands.

He took a deep breath. "First of all, I didn't hit _you_. I hit the wall. And I think I broke my hand." He held up his fist and though it looked pretty swollen and purple and torn, I didn't feel bad.

All I said was, "Well, if you weren't such an asshole you wouldn't have done that."

His eyes narrowed. "I know, Izza."

At that very moment, however, all I could say was, "Good then. We're in agreement. You're a dick." I flung myself back into my seat and drew up my knees. We didn't have anything else to talk about, as far as I was concerned.

Looking back, I'm kind of ashamed I didn't cut him some slack. I mean, he'd admitted he was wrong. And, he was doing a non-traditional Cleaner man thing by not taking me down a peg for being "just" a woman and by not meting out "just" punishments. Instead he'd denied tradition. Even here, at the side of the road with his hand broken and looking like hamburger, he denied Cleaner tradition by talking to me as his equal instead of ignoring my foolish, womanly behavior. Or, beating it out me, which was far easier and unfortunately, far more common.

Instead, he draped both his hands over the steering wheel and stared straight ahead out the dripped from his knuckles onto his jeans, leaving dark spots. He said, "I know about you. And Dean Winchester."

_What?_ My heart sort of exploded-into my throat, down to my stomach, into my knees. I felt nauseous. I felt like running away. I felt like…"What?"

"I saw you. That day. On the Ferris wheel."

"_What_?" Spots swam before my eyes.

"No one else did. And I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want you banished."

Banished is what happens to Cleaners who break the rules. Kind of like what happened back at the diner. If any other Clan member saw us not only having a sort of conversation with the Winchesters but making actual physical contact, we'd be banished. Because we're not supposed to mix with Hunters. I mean, that day my dad didn't say "hello" to John Winchester? Rude by normal civilian standards, but displaying incredibly good sense in a bad situation to a Cleaner.

_Like a breeze,_ remember? Breezes don't stop to chat. And they _really_ don't get made, recognized and rescued by the Hunters they clean for. Very bad. We won't talk about kissing. That's just...well, I think you're getting the idea, here. But anyhow, back to Kieran.

"What do you mean?" I wrapped my arms around my legs and pulled myself into a tight ball in what I believe was an attempt to stop my heart from beating out of my chest and bouncing across the dashboard. I'm not sure why I continued being obtuse; I think I thought if I ignored what he was saying, played dumb, then it would all go away. Business as usual. Bleached. Cleaned. Vanished. _Gone._

"I thought...it was so many years ago. And you're a woman now. I figured it was just a kid thing, so why bring it up again? We were kids, we got immunity sort of...maybe slaps on the wrist. But as adults...you know we're accountable. No contact. At all. And today, the way you acted…" He sighed, and turned to me. "You remember. I mean, you'd do it again. What you did then. You _kissed_ him that day. I saw you."

_Not possible._ "You were sick. You couldn't have seen me kissing him."

"I followed you guys. I mean, c'mon. It was a _fair_! Do you think I was just gonna lie around the camper when _that_ was going on? I think the only thing that would have stopped me would have been barfing up a lung."

True enough. I would have had to be literally on death's doorstep before I would have missed the chance to do something fun and out of the ordinary when I was thirteen. Clearly, Kieran hadn't been dying. Just puking, and not even an internal organ. "So. So I kissed a guy. Big deal. How do you know it was Dean Winchester, anyway?" Too late, I realized I'd already admitted it by denying the kiss instead of the guy, but hey—lying is stupid. And I suck at it, anyway. But I've mentioned that before.

He just looked at me, and quirked one of his heavy, dark brows. "You know what it was like that summer. We'd been cleaning up after a hunter for weeks. You might not have paid attention to the guy we were following, but I was. I mean Hunters are cool and he was amazing at it. Plus, he had that car…" He sighed again. "They still have it."

_The Impala._ Of course. Bad ass-est Huntermobile ever. With all that chrome and shiny black paint and rumbling engine. We followed behind it quite often as kids and even as adults. At a distance. I know Kieran lusted after the thing. Sort of like I lusted after its driver. The only difference between us was that _he_ wouldn't have sex with the car.

I didn't think he would, anyway.

Kieran raised his hands in a supplicating gesture. "Come on, admit it. Cleaners are nerds. If you're a thirteen-year-old boy, what would you rather be? The lion tamer or the guy bringing up the rear with the wheelbarrow and the shovel?" He looked embarrassed, but I couldn't I blame him. I was a closer-to-thirty-than twenty-year-old woman, and I still would have rather been a cool Hunter than a lame Cleaner. But I didn't have time to consider it any more, because then Kieran dropped _another_ bombshell. He focused his attention on the blood spots on his knee, staring at them like he'd never seen such a thing. "It wasn't just you breaking the rules, you know. Because...Sam and I sort of hung out that summer. We were friends."

_Whaaaaaat?_ I unfurled myself. "Huh?"

He looked sheepish. "It was kind of by accident. His dad was on a hunt with his brother and our dads were on the job and you were busy with your mom and...well. Neither one of us had anyone to hang with. And we accidentally met on a playground near where he and his family were staying and our familes were camped and we started talking. We were the almost same age." Kieran trailed off, his eyes distant as he remembered. "For once, I didn't have to answer any questions, like why I lived in a camper and why I didn't stay at a school or whatever. He didn't think I was weird and I didn't think he was weird, either. I'd never had a friend, who wasn't a Cleaner, like that before." He shrugged. "Besides, we kind of liked the same things. Like...um...Harry Potter."

In other words, they bonded in a nerdly way.

But I understood how he felt, because I never had a friend who wasn't a Cleaner, either. Times that we enrolled in regular school systems, we were treated like oddballs, because we were. Civilians don't understand our nomadic lifestyle to begin with, and when you're a teenager mixed in with other teens, you're just a freak. So I could picture him and Sam playing at just being normal kids that summer. Or as close as they could be, two chubby nerdy boys probably pretending they could do magic by waving sticks around. Which is, of course, ridiculous. No one can do magic.

Not with plain old sticks, anyway.

Funny how they still managed to work their supernatural lifestyles into their attempt at normalcy, but this didn't occur to me then. You know, we all have our destinies whether we like them or not, and sometimes their pattern kind of whomps you in the face. But at the time all I did was nod and wonder what I'd been doing when he was hanging out with Sam and playing wizard. Probably learning how to scrub ectoplasm out of a wool/polyester blend or something. My mom had kept me pretty busy that summer. I suddenly realized she'd probably known how close the Winchesters were living and had been keeping me busy so I didn't meet them on the playground, too. (Had she and my aunt known that Kieran was? And if they did, why didn't they stop it?)

"Anyhow, I met Dean once, too. We—well, anyway. I knew it was him when I saw him getting on the Ferris wheel that day. And I saw you and him get paired up in the car, and then I saw you ride it again and again and…" He frowned. "But _why_ did you kiss him, Issa?"

"I dunno," was all I could say. _Because he's hot and well...who wouldn't kiss him? _was what went through my mind, but at that moment I figured it wasn't the best answer. And then I had a question of my own. "So if you knew Sam—know Sam—and Dean, and you were friends with them, then how come you hate them so much?"

Kieran didn't answer. He just looked at me with those familiar blue-green eyes. Eyes had watched me, emulated me, taunted me and annoyed me since I was five years old. With a sinking feeling, I suddenly realized something that I should have recognized long before this: Kieran, my shadow, my adopted cousin, my Cleaning partner—was _in_ love with me. I could read it right there in those eyes. Everything. All his emotions. And it was like being punched in the face.

"Oh...oh, Kier…" I sighed. I wanted to cry. Because I knew he'd never see the same emotion in my eyes. Even if our families did arrange a marriage for us, as Cleaner parents are wont to do to keep the bloodlines pure and intact, I would never feel the same way for him that he felt about me.

And it was all because of Dean Winchester.

I pulled my gaze from his, reached out and gently lifted his mangled hand from the steering wheel. "Let me get the first aid kit," I said, but nothing else. Because what else could I say?

0-0-0-0-0

We didn't speak any more about it. In fact, Kieran carried on as if it hadn't happened. And call me a wimp (which I was) but I just didn't want to bring it up to him. I can say that I stopped seeing him as annoying and started viewing him with pity. Which was worse. Because I saw everything he did through a guilty filter. And then we were both miserable.

Plus, we were both worried that someone might have seen us talking to the brothers Winchester, and report us. Because it was Christmas and most of the available Cleaner clans were gathering at Magda McConnell's for the Annual Gathering, it was the perfect timing for a Banishing.

Fortunately, our worries appeared to be for naught because we were we were sent back to work after only a few days of the Gathering. Hunters don't take days off—or very few of them—and Dean and Sam had taken on a few pagan gods while we were eating too much (I'd spent the first few days at Magda's inhaling sugar cookies by the dozen, a consequence of a guilty conscience). It was almost a relief to get back in the van and back on the road, even though our time with our families was cut short.

Kieran took his usual spot behind the wheel and I settled into the passenger seat with one of my Christmas presents, a book from Magda. (Don't laugh when I tell you it was _Anne of Green Gables_, which is so alien to my life it was practically a fantasy book. But I really enjoyed it, maybe more so, because of that. No confounding cousins for Anne, just the curse of red hair that she wished would be auburn.) At any rate, I was glad to have something to do to fill the space between Kieran and me.

As usual, Kieran picked the music, but instead of Dubstep we listened to Bing Crosby all the way to Ypsilanti, Michigan, where Dean and his brother had ganked some Gods of the Winter Solstice with their own evergreen tree. Kieran's mouth was set in a tight line of disapproval the whole time we were at the scene, in part, I suppose, because of the Winchesters and what I knew (finally) to be jealousy and with a little envy mixed in.

I can assure you, however, most of his sour-lemon face was because of the stench; there were bits and pieces of human flesh all over the basement that needed to be disposed of-apparently pagan gods eat people-as well as the bodies of the gods themselves. I can't say that my expression was much different than his. Because the familiar holiday scents of gingerbread, cinnamon and sugar cookies, blended with the stench of decomposing pieces of humans and impaled and rotting gods, is a scent I wouldn't recommend. In the end, we rolled the whole mess up into "Madge and Edward Carrigan's" plastic couch cover, carried it out to the van in the dark of night and took it to an isolated spot where we burned it all. (Side note: when you burn Gods of the Winter Solstice, the flames glow red and green. In case you were wondering about where Christmas' colors came from-now you know.)

By the time we were finished making the Carrigan's house gore-free and as lovely as it might have been if they'd been normal Christmas fanatics and not sadistic killers, the Gathering was over and it was business as usual. Magda called me about our next job, cleaning up after the Winchesters and some bitchy witches in Sturbridge Massachusetts.

The site itself was lacking bodies but whoever had made the witches disappear had left odds and ends of spellwork and other stuff scattered about. Kieran blamed the Winchesters. Of course. He blamed them for just about anything. But the brothers sometimes very kindly "disappeared" people injured in horrific ways, especially if there were families involved who would discover their loved ones in states of disrepair so heart-wrenching it would hurt them forever. The bottom line was-there were no bodies. Overall, the scene was so clean, we didn't spend much time there, and I didn't do my usual scrying spells to make sure we got everything before we left. Which is why what happened next, happened at all.

0-0-0-0-0

Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Been there, done that. I'd finished my book by this time and was spending a lot of time staring out the window. I had a lot to think about. Decisions to make.

Mostly about Kieran. And of course, Dean. But now they were all tangled up in some weird knot that made me feel guilty and secretive. And angry. I'd reached what the books like to call A Crossroads in my life.

If I had a shovel I could summon a demon and make it all go away.

But I didn't, and I wouldn't. I'd seen the results. Scraped them off an antique Victorian armoire with rose filigrees, as a matter of fact. Meeting up with your hellhound is not pretty, and definitely not how I'd like to be remembered.

"Stop brooding, Isolde," my cousin chided somewhere around Altoona, Pennsylvania. Probably because he couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"I'm not brooding," I brooded. The question was: could I give up my fantasy of heavenly ever after (or at least for a few nights) with Dean Winchester and just settle on doing what was expected of me? Was I really ready to grow up (finally) and accept my lot in life? Or was I going to be like Anne in the book Magda gave me? A dreamer, somewhat reckless, in pursuit of happiness?

Maybe what I wanted to do was leave the Life of a Cleaner behind and just start a whole new path for myself. With what, and how, I had no idea. I didn't know how to do anything _but_ Clean, so that meant I'd end up...cleaning. Only instead of dead monsters and people (and their various bits, pieces and by-products), I'd be scrubbing toilets and stuff.

I'd rather clean up pieces of dead things.

It suddenly struck me that I might be able to get a job with one of those disaster clean-up places-I was more than qualified-but how to explain my background? The answer hit me like a brick: _Magda_. She was the one you called when some clueless civilian wanted to "speak with your agency"; she had a whole phone bank set up on the wall of her kitchen with different labels, like Merry Maids, FEMA (I'm not kidding), CTS Decon and others. Sometimes it happens: someone decides they don't believe the people with the buckets, mops, latex gloves and fashionable orange jumpsuits are there to clean up the horrific, bloody mess, and they just have to speak with someone. Magda is our Someone. I'd just have to convince her this was the right decision for me.

If I could do that, then there _was_ a way out of this whole mess. I just needed the courage to do it. Because once I left, there would be no coming back. Not to the Clans, or to the Hunters, either. That door would shut behind me. But it was okay. I was ready. It was that easy. I wouldn't have to lose my family completely, I just wasn't going to live their nomadic, crazy lifestyle.

And I wouldn't have to worry that I'd be bonded to my cousin-who I didn't want to hurt but didn't love romantically (or want to have babies with), either. True, there would be no Dean Winchester, but then again, was there ever a _real_ chance of Dean Winchester?

"Brooding."

"Am not!" I turned to look at him at the same moment he sang "Liar liar pants on fire," and a hair elastic snapped against my cheek. He'd gotten a haircut at the Gathering, and now sported a shorter, less pirate-y-though still shaggy-'do. Consequently all his former hair tamers were being used as weapons. Against me.

"Asshole!" I couldn't help but laugh. I felt lighter than I had since before Christmas. I wasn't completely free of this mess, but I had hope. And at that moment, I could look at my cousin without annoyance, or pity, and just laugh and enjoy being with him, something I hadn't felt in a long time.

"Takes one to know one," he grinned and his eyes twinkled as he looked at me. Then his gaze flickered to the rear view mirror and his expression changed. "Shit."

"What?" I sighed, disappointed,and steeled myself to hear one of his familiar diatribes against the "fucking Winchesters" again.

Instead, he pulled over. "Get the registration," he said, keeping his hands in sight on the steering wheel.

My heart sank. Great. My dad was going to stroke out. I bent to look in the dash compartment but then the doors squeaked open in a violent way and I turned to discover the muzzle of a Glock 22. Pointed at my face.

"FBI. Get out with your hands on your heads. Now!" came the demanding, commanding voice at other end of the steadily held gun and I realized we were surrounded. And, apparently, under arrest.

* * *

_Hm. Not exactly sure what she's got in store for us but...well. Leave a review and we'll see if she continues her story. Here's mine: More Dean!_


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's note: $ $#! Why do em-dashes always turn into simple hyphens? Grumble. My whole life (okay, since first grade, I think) I've been using em-dashes in my writing. Yet here, I can't. Gah! _

_Please excuse the winky little hyphens in odd places. They're supposed to be bigger. It's all this site's fault. Gah. _

* * *

**FOUR**

It all happened so fast. We were taken away in separate cars and brought to some kind of nondescript office building; I saw Kieran being hauled in by two big guys in black suits (which would have been funny if I wasn't so scared); he looked over his shoulder at me with wide eyes and an expression I'd never seen on his face before.

I could recognize it easily because I knew it was reflected on my own face: terror.

They put me in what appeared to be a closet, with a desk. An agent-a woman-questioned me about places we'd cleaned. You know, you don't think much about it, but there are security cameras everywhere you go. I, for one, will not be picking my nose in the future unless I'm absolutely sure I'm not only alone but unobserved. There aren't many places you can go. (Not that I really pick my nose. I'm just saying.) There's no privacy anywhere. Even when you're ganking monsters-which appear human, often enough-or cleaning up the messes left behind by the Hunters who ganked them.

I offer Madge and Edward Carrigan as evidence. _Ho, ho, ho. Yuck._

Not that Madge and Ed had security cams installed to record their over-the-top Christmas festivities. No. But there was that warehouse, and all those bits of vampire gick...and various other things prior to that. And then Kieran's wonderful spitting/bleeding/and apparently peeing (give the boy a bush or a building and he's good to go-God, men are gross) DNA evidence that I'd left unscryed...well. I don't have to tell you; you know the Winchester's history as well as I do. Anyhow, we were being accused of being accessories to murder, or grave desecration (which I didn't quite get-how can straightening stones, resodding graves and restoring crypts be desecration? Seems more like restoration if you ask me. Or something.) It was hard to make out because everyone was so vague. It was weird.

Weirder was the fact that-after speaking to some head honcho badass named Henriksen-the agent let me go. Practically vaulted me out of there, as a matter of fact. But they kept our van (and my clothes!) and most importantly, they kept Kieran. It seemed like only an hour or so that I stood on the sidewalk in Pittsburgh, with only my purse, a hairbrush, my travel toothbrush, my wallet and about twenty bucks and some change. Everything a girl needs to be well-groomed and practically homeless in the middle of a major metropolitan American city. In January.

Except a coat. Or a phone; mine was plugged into the charger adapter in the cigarette lighter portal. Also in our van. Which was now impounded. _Thank you, FBI. May the vengeful spirit of J. Edgar Hoover haunt you forever._

So I had no where to go and no way to contact anyone. (Do you remember anyone's phone number? No. They're all on speed dial. Magda was 2. Useless at a public pay phone. Lesson learned,OK? Don't judge.) A look at a city bus map pointed me in the direction of the library, which meant warmth, shelter and restrooms. From there, I figured, I could make some plans about how to proceed. I had no idea how long Kieran would be locked up; from the sounds of the conversation Henriksen had with the agent in the hallway, however, it would be a while.

There I was huddled next to a barely functioning radiator in the Public Library, wondering how long I could survive on a diet of vending machine peanuts and water from the restroom faucet if I budgeted carefully-assuming Kieran got out.

And then I realized that I had no way to contact him (and he had no way to reach me) and I needed to leave my cozy library cubical, get back on the bus and return to the building Kieran was in.

But I didn't remember which bus to take and... _Damn it._ Once again I'd acted first and thought later. _Idiot._

It hit me how ill-equipped I was to function as a civilian. My entire life had been about my Clan and my family; everything had been taken care and every move-even the ones I'd thought secret-had been monitored. Basically I'd been coddled cosseted and cloistered and that rendered me helpless.

Fuck.

Well I could either sit there and think about it or I could do something, and since we've already established that thinking things through isn't my forte, you know what I did next. I left.

It had started to rain by the time I left the library—more like sleet—and it was dark. I stood at the bus stop and waited for a bus to come that looked familiar or maybe had a sign like Federal Building or something similar on it. None came.

Some dink in a BMW drove too close to the curb and splashed me with half-frozen water, though. I was soaked.

Frozen.

Homeless.

Hungry.

Lost.

And then, someone raced out of the shadows and stole my purse. So we'll add Broke and Without ID to the list. Not to mention unable to brush my teeth or my hair.

I ask you; if you were me, what would you have done?

I started walking. What else was there to do? Predictably, I walked in the direction that found me in a very seedy section of town. The kind of section where a girl—especially a frozen, homeless, hungry, lost, ID-less and broke one, shouldn't be in because she's going to lose her last attribute—alive—if she's not careful. Of course, at this point I was practically hypothermic in a thin wet shirt and worn wet jeans, and shivering so hard my teeth rattled. So I wasn't careful, and not paying attention when a group of teens surrounded me and began taunting me. They were wild-eyed and looking for some fun, and I was it.

"Leave me alone," I screamed as they tore at my clothes; I was tossed from boy to boy like a ball. Their hands slid over my body, grabbing and pinching and fondling, and there was nothing I could do to stop them but struggle and scream.

But it was a exercise in futility; one of me (and not a very big one of me) against five of them. Before long they'd dragged me to an alley. I got in one last, good scream. I think I said something like "I need help!"; whatever it was, they laughed at me.

I still struggled and fought. Before long I could hear them fighting amongst themselves. Two big guys joined the throng and they appeared to be knocking off the smaller ones so they could have me to themselves. When the smaller of the two big guys reached me, I gave it my best—and final—shot, and popped him right in the eye.

"Hey!" He reared back.

"Fuck off!" I think I screamed, and struggled to escape his strong grasp, landing another satisfying right fist to his face; I could feel his skin split under my knuckles.

"Calm down! I'm not trying to rape you, I'm trying to help-omph!" He yelped as plowed my knee into something soft. Because at that point the only word I heard was "rape".

And then the other big guy slid his arms through mine, immobilizing my elbows so I couldn't swing anymore, and the first one pressed his body against mine so that I couldn't kick, and I found myself as the center filling in the middle of a big man sandwich. And then the guy pressed up against me peered down into my face and said, "It's you again. Again?"

I feel so warm, I thought. And I fainted.

0-0-0-0-0

I woke up dressed in warm flannel and dry socks. On a bed. Under a blanket. I lifted my head to see where I was; a shitty motel room. "Am I in Hell?"

"Funny you should say that," said a deep and gravelly voice to my right. A familiar one that made me shiver.

"Dean," admonished another, not-as-deep and somewhat bitchy voice to my left. "That's not funny."

Dean! I buried my face in the pillow. My heart pounded.

I was safe.

I was alive.

I was in a motel room with Dean Winchester.

"They stole my hairbrush!" I blurted, wanting to hide. "They took it."

"I don't believe it. She's worried about her hair, now? Really?"

"Dean, she just woke up. Give her a minute."

"Just woke up? Sam, if we hadn't had happened along when we did, she would be dead right now. If not from being torn apart by those animals, then from exposure. What the hell was she doing..." He trailed off; I felt him sitting on the edge of the mattress and his fingers slid under my chin and turned my head so that I had to look at him. His green eye sparked. One of them. The other eye was bloodshot and half-hidden under a swollen and partially closed eyelid. And his left cheek had a bloodied bruise on it.

Oops.

"What the hell were you doing in the middle of the worst section of the city, alone, in the dark-where the hell is your stupid boyfriend?"

"Dean!" Sam scolded again. "Let her talk."

"I don't have time to talk. You may have forgotten, Sam, but I'm on a deadline here and the clock is ticking pretty damn loud. I don't have a lot of time to be picking up strays right now. We need to find Bela and get the Colt back." He jumped up and began stomping back and forth in his big boots.

You've probably seen his boots; and if you haven't, they're your basic Timberline-type hiking/hunting boots with a thick rubber tread. What you haven't seen is the mud they collect in their grooves. Honestly, if he'd been under my tutelage, I would have taught him to wipe his feet. The boy-the man-was a dirt collector. Even now, he was dropping mud clods the size of Iowa onto the rug and it was squicking me out. And, he was leaving footprints!

I longed for my little portable vacuum cleaner, stuck in the back of our impounded van. You've probably seen the ads for it-it can suck up a bowling ball. But I digress. Because the important thing is, seeing his feet making prints on the rug reminded me that it was my job to clean up after him and either we'd done a pretty crappy job or we hadn't, but the fact remained that Kieran was in custody and I was in a motel room with two men who would make me get Banished from my family for life. I'm so embarrassed to admit this, but it's true-remembering this caused me to do the one thing I hated more than anything but always seemed to be doing as a direct result of this man: I burst into tears. "They took my toothbrush!" I wailed. (Well, it seemed to make sense at the time.)

"Oh, for fuck's sake-"

"I've got an extra you can have. And you can use my hairbrush if you want to." Sam sat down beside me and actually pulled me into a hug. I cuddled against him, grateful for the comfort.

Dean raised his arms to the ceiling and then let them fall limply to his sides with a slapping noise. "Great. Francis and WhotheFuck are bonding over hair care products." He shook his head and glared at me. "You do realize I don't even know your name, don't you?"

"Oh." I sniffled. "You don't?"

"No." He put his hands on his hips and looked pissy. Kind of almost...well...hissy-pissy. Like raging queen hissy. I couldn't help it. I giggled.

Under my cheek, I heard an answering rumble in Sam's chest; apparently he saw it, too. He gave me a hug and whispered, "Uh oh. Deana's mad," in my ear.

So my tears turned to hilarity in the space of an instant; I will always be grateful to Sam for that.

Because I was able to pull myself together again and answer Dean with a smile on my face instead of tears in my eyes. "My name is Isolde McShae."

He stared at me with his brow furrowed and his nose wrinkled. "Your name is Insult? What the fuck kind of a name is that?"

My smile turned to an annoyed smirk. "No, it's Isolde, you moron. It's pronounced IZ-auld."

Beside me, with his arms still enfolding me, Sam snorted. "Insult." He chuckled again and it vibrated through me. Thank you, Sam. You're my hero. Right at this moment, anyway.

Dean narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. Which, I noticed, were still (and always) that luscious strawberry-pink color which should have looked weird on such an Alpha male but never did. "Sam, stop hugging Insult. Girl's just escaped being mauled by a gang of punks. The last thing she needs is to feel is groped by a giant geek like you."

"He's not a geek," I heard myself say, and Dean raised an eyebrow at me.

"Oh really. Well, he's my brother and if I say he's a geek, he's a geek. Geek!" He spat the last word out in a way that reminded me of Kieran, and I suddenly realized that Dean was jealous.

Of me, or Sam, I wasn't sure, so I slipped out of Sam's embrace with a parting "thank you" hug. I was careful not to get out from under the blanket though. Because I had no pants on. "Um..." I looked down at my ensemble: giant flannel shirt, and fuzzy wool socks that fit my feet like two garbage bags. "Where are my clothes?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Dean said and folded his arms over his chest. "So start talking, Insult."

I explained the past ten or so hours as best I could; by the time I was done, Dean was huffing and puffing like a steam engine and raising and lowering his arms like a jumping jack. (I tried not to think "raging queen" again.) "You know who's doing this, don't you?" He told Sam. "Who's responsible?"

"Yes, Henriksen. But why, Dean?"

"I don't know why. All I do know is-now we have to go get the fucking kid." He sighed. "I've got three months, Sammy. Three months! And now I have to waste time figuring out how to jailbreak some dumb Cleaner who-"

I'd heard enough. I stood up. "I'm leaving."

"The fuck you are, Princess. You sit your ass right back down on that bed!" Dean pointed.

"No, I'm not." I wrapped the sheet around my waist and started tugging it from the mattress, then gave up when I realized the shirt fell to my knees like an ill-fitting blue plaid dress and covered me quite nicely. "Where are my boots?"

"Her boots. She's going to go out dressed like-are you serious?" he roared at me.

"Well, someone has to go save Kieran. And since you don't have time-as you pointed out-then it's up to me and..." a thought occurred to me, which was unusual since I was in full Re-Act-Don't-Think mode. I turned to Sam. "That hairbrush you mentioned?"

He wrinkled his forehead at me. "Don't listen to Dean, Isolde. He's just cranky. We'll help you get your boyfriend out."

"Your stupid, abusive boyfriend," Dean added.

I gave him a look that I hope conveyed volumes. "He's not my boyfriend, you dick wad. He's my cousin."

"Whatever." He frowned, and then, I guess, my words penetrated. He tilted his head. "Really? He's not your boyfriend?"

I shook my head.

Just like that, his brow unfurled, his face relaxed, and he bestowed one of his killer smiles (complete with twinkling green eye) at me. "Oh. Well then. We need to go get him. Sam, find the girl her shoes. We need to bail her cousin out of the slammer."

* * *

_I wonder how that's going to happen? Please review-I'm open to suggestions because I have NO clue! _


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** _If we didn't already know and love Dean, he might seem like the world's biggest dick, in the following chapter. (Or at least, a horny one.) Fortunately, however, we know deep down, he's really a nice guy. On his way to Hell, of course, but only because he's The Righteous Man. (See Canon for this one). I had to look up the definition of righteous because (quick, name the movie!) "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means". But here's what I found: right·eous ˈrīCHəs/adjective 1.(of a person or conduct) morally right or justifiable; virtuous. Another definition: 2. (informal) good, excellent._

_I'm wondering if he's more of the number 2. definition, which is excellent in the Ferris Buehler kind of way: "He's a righteous dude". Or, as the dictionary I was using wrote: "It's a righteous bread pudding." (Whut? Seriously? Bread pudding? WTF?) Because I'm not really (ever) seeing him as "virtuous". (Which is a whole other definition into which I will not delve.)_

_Question: Is Season Nine Dean still The Righteous Man? Or is he more like bread pudding?_

_Anyway, it's been awhile since I posted. (Thank you Muse. Thank you, Life. Thank you season ends of Supernatural that make my head spin so hard I can't even think about the characters in any way other than how they're shown on the actual Show. Gah.) So let me recap: Isolde just got rescued by the Winchester from a gang of thugs intent on raping her and leaving her for dead. She's cut off from everything and everyone, especially her cousin, who is in FBI custody. And she's alone in a motel room with Dean and Sam. (Steady, ladies. Eeeeeaasy there, now.) And it's time to figure out what we'll do to get to the rest of the story, so we'll just spend some time here. Catching our breath. Or losing it._

_Speaking of losing it (and virtue)-I honestly didn't know about what Isolde discloses in the upcoming conversation. I'm embarrassed, actually, but it makes sense as she describes it, so...but still. Geez. Hard to believe. And something else to be overcome, I suppose. Certainly it must pose an additional challenge for Dean. Maybe. Well...we'll see. I haven't this plotted ahead, so who knows? Please, prepare yourselves and suspend your belief. Geesh..._

**FIVE**

I thought we'd run right out and save Kieran and that would be that. But Sam-who I'd been thinking of as my big, hairy hero, at least during those comforting hugs-decided to point out that running into the FBI building in the middle of the night without a plan, especially since they were fugitives of said Bureau, was not the wisest thing to do.

Big brainy geek.

You've probably figured out by now that Dean and I share some similarities, not the least of which is the desire to fight first and think last. So having someone like Sam around is probably a very good thing for people like us. At the moment, however, we stood there staring at him like he'd suddenly sprouted a pair of wings and started flying around the room.

"You mean...leave Kieran there?" I was the first of us able to articulate anything besides, "gah".

"Well...yeah. For all we know, they're holding him so that we do try to get him out. He's bait." Sam wrinkled his forehead and pursed his lips.

I turned to Dean. "Seriously?"

Dean shrugged and made a face that almost looked proud, like a parent's when little Johnny wins the class spelling bee. "He's probably right."

"But…" I stood and looked around the room. The shitty motel room. "So...we're supposed to just…" It was disgusting. Dank and dark and filled with filth. "Stay here?"

"For now, until we come up with some kind of plan. I'll call Bobby," Sam said. "Want me to go out on a supply run?"

"Sure." Dean tossed him the keys, something I didn't realize as monumental at the time. I didn't know then that Dean was practically rabid about his car. In retrospect, however...well. Dean was distracted. By me.

The perv of him! Seriously. I'd just nearly been raped and he was already planning his moves. But I digress.

Sam left on his errand and we were left in the room. Alone. Dean smiled at me.

"What?" I said.

He waggled his eyebrows. "So. Insult."

"Isolde."

"Yeah. Whatever. That's what I said. Insult. You do tend to get yourself into situations, don't you?"

"Do I?" I sat back down on the bed, completely unsure what to do or how to proceed. I mean...you lust after a guy for years and then you're suddenly in a room alone with him. And he can't remember your name.

Awkward.

"Well, yeah. First at the diner and then the alley."

"Uh huh."

"You attract trouble."

Did the current situation count? I thought it might.

"I guess." I wondered where Sam had put that extra toothbrush; I had a feeling I might be needing it.

"But now, you're safe."

"Am I?"

"Yep. You're here. With me."

In the back of my mind, a little voice told me that Dean's and my definitions of safe were completely different. "Well...we're in this room."

"Yup. All alone."

I noticed he'd started on one side of the room but was making slow progress toward me; two more sentences and he'd be sitting beside me on the bed.

Did I want him to sit beside me on the bed?

Well, yeah, but...um...there was a problem. My heart was pounding so hard, my thoughts were drowned out. "I think there's something you should know."

"Really? What's that?" His voice was soft. Deep and velvety, like a purr. Not at all like his usual gravelly rasp. The bed sank as he sat beside me; I felt myself tilting into his hot, hard body.

My nipples puckered. I could actually feel that. I won't even tell you what was going on between my legs, but things were happening there, too. I shivered as he reached out and brushed a piece of hair from my forehead. He leaned forward. I really needed to mention that thing. What was it? It was important. He needed to know...His lips touched mine, soft and wet, and then the tip of his tongue flickered against my lower lip and began threading into my mouth.

He tasted of whiskey and mint, the weirdest combination ever. His big, hard torso pressed, solid and warm against me, and his denim-clad thigh wedged between my bare knees, gently moving them apart as he pressed me back against the mattress. I was completely engulfed, on fire, with my heart racing and my body weeping. I raised my hips and moaned; his hand touched my knee and began sliding up my inner thigh, making its way upward. His fingertip slid under the edge of my panties.

I suddenly remembered what it was I'd been trying to tell him.

"I'm a virgin!" I squeaked.

"What?" He came to a screeching halt. Well, not literally, but you could see the gears in his mind sort of clashing and grinding all over the place. "You're a...seriously?" He sat up and back and stared at me. He was breathing hard, as if he'd run a marathon. "Really?"

"Well...yeah." I pulled the hem of the shirt down over my legs.

"Oh." He sat there, looking at me like I was an exhibit in a museum. Which I was, really. Because no one is a virgin, anymore. Not anyone normal. Or over the age of sixteen. "Really? Like, a virgin-virgin or just a virgin, or like a virgin but…?" He stared at me with disbelief.

"There are levels of virginity?" This was something I'd never considered. Was it even possible?

He tilted his head. "You're like, what? Twenty-something? How can you be…?"

I shrugged. "Welcome to my world."

"Man." He sort of shook himself, all his sexy-machinations put aside for now. "I'd heard rumors about you Cleaner girls, but never believed them."

"Believe them. Usually, I'd be married by now. I just managed to escape." I frowned as a thought occurred to me. No man had ever approached my father to ask to court me, or if they had, I was unaware of it. What the heck? Was there something wrong with me? I'd never really thought about it before because I didn't want to. I'd always been completely besotted by my YumYum Boy. And now that I was alone with Mr. Yummy, it decided to rear its head. Sonovabitch. "I think no one wants me."

"I think your cousin probably scared them all away." Mr. Yummy nodded and grinned. "He's a scary-looking dude. Almost as big as Sam."

"Hairier, too."

We shared a snork of laughter, the kind that relieves an awkward moment and clears away the angst. Dean looked at me with his famous, sparkling green eyes. "So...do you want to be a virgin?"

I looked back at him. Did I?

Not around him. Not that it was possible. I mean...well. Dean Winchester. You know. No woman of age could possibly remain virginal around him for long. Unless she was really committed to the concept of chastity. And I wasn't. I just hadn't been in the right room with the right Dean.

Hell, no. I wanted hot, sticky, sweaty, tasty sex with YumYum Boy, and I wanted it right now. "Honestly...it is problematic. Virgin's blood is a hot commodity."

"You're right. Vamps find you a delicacy." He tilted an eyebrow and leaned in toward me once more.

"Witches would pay a high price for me." I lay back against the headboard.

"Demons, too. And dragons." He advanced.

"Right! That's right. Dragons." I frowned. "Do dragons exist?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. But I don't want to find out. Do you?"

"Not particularly."

"All righty, then. Let's get this done." He reached for me. In the blink of an eye, one of his warm hands was behind my neck and the other was tugging free the buttons on the flannel shirt with gentle, calloused fingers. And his luscious, strawberry-tinted lips were nearly touching mine and—

"I'm back! I called Bobby. And I got cheesesteaks. When in Philly. Oh. Sorry." Sam strode in and we sprang apart.

Yeah. Sam Winchester. Definitely NOT my hero. Ever. Again.

0-0-0-0-0

We sat watching television. Actually, we sat watching Sam watching television, and sneaking glances at each other. I swear, you could feel the lust we emitted just saturating the room. Sam remained oblivious, however.

Or maybe he wasn't oblivious. It was possible he was just used to being with his brother and hormonally-charged women, because there was no way a female could sit in the same room with such incredible hotness and not be physically aroused.

If you're wondering why I wasn't feeling at all guilty about feeling this way while Kieran sat in some Fed holding cell, probably scared and worried, it was because we-well, they-had a plan to get him out. But it required the presence of a man they called Bobby, and he wouldn't be able to get there until later the next day. So in the meantime, there was nothing to do but try to figure out a way to get rid of the hairy giant sitting between us on the shitty motel couch.

After about an hour, I got bored. Dean did too. He started cleaning his guns. I started cleaning the motel room. I started with the bathroom (mainly because I needed to pee and it gave me an excuse to close the door, run the water and flush the toilet. And then there was just the ick factor; there was primordial bacteria growing in there. Any minute it was going to leap out of the bathtub where it posed as a ring, and strangle some unsuspecting civvy trying to brush their teeth. I swear. Pure nastiness.)

Sam went in after I came out and came out with his forehead wrinkled. "It looks amazing in there. And it smells like...lemons and vanilla. I didn't realize that design on the bottom of the tub was actually mildew. But there are no cleaning supplies anywhere. Did you use magic?"

"A little." (Actually a lot.) "And a lot of elbow grease." (Okay...a little. I wasn't about to touch that stuff without a layer of latex between it and my skin.) I wasn't sure what they knew about us, and to be honest, I wasn't sure what I was allowed to reveal. Then again, I suddenly realized, it didn't matter because I was going to be Banished after this for sure. There was no way word of this wasn't going to get out.

I would have to stand before the Elders. The fact that these Hunters had rescued me from harm, and kept me safe and sheltered during a winter's night wouldn't matter. All they'd see is that I was not only talking to Hunters but sharing a room with them, sharing clan secrets and breaking every taboo...For once I didn't think of rebelling or leaving. Because those were fantasies. This was a harsh reality. A chill swept over me, and I could feel the color draining from my face.

I thought of the way my mother had reacted upon learning I'd be assigned to the Winchesters. Had she known, somehow, that this would happen? She did have a reputation among others as a psychic, but I'd never paid attention. She lost things all the time, like car keys, and she never appeared to notice things like-oh-me sneaking out to suck face with a strange boy on a Ferris wheel; how could she know things of import?

It struck me that once I was Banished, I'd never be allowed to speak with her again. I wouldn't even be allowed to say goodbye...

Dean looked up from his sawed off, grinning. "Keep cleaning, Insult. This room won't clean itself..." he trailed off and the sparkle left his eyes. "Isolde? You okay?"

I nodded. "I'm okay. Just..." _Realizing how screwed I really am._

He got up, dropped the gun and reached for me. "It's gonna be okay. You'll see. Everything will be fine." He folded me into his arms and I buried my face in his chest, determined not to cry.

Behind us, Sam cleared his throat. "I think I'm going to go out for a ride."

In moments, he'd left and we were once again left alone. Dean nudged my chin up with gentle fingers and kissed my forehead. "It's going to be okay. Everything's going to be all right. I've got you."

He lifted me up and carried me to the bed.

* * *

_And-scene! Seriously? Gah. Isolde suddenly slammed the door in my face. I guess we'll have to wait-again. Sigh. If my Muse can recover from the Season Finale, that is. Cross your fingers. And Dean, stay righteous!_


End file.
